BURST
Alberta hate-crimes watchdog StopHateAB has received a complaint arising from the Alberta Prosperity Project’s Jan. 7 town hall in Didsbury.
The APP has been holding town halls across the province to rally support and gather signatures for a petition that could force a referendum on Alberta independence. If the APP gets 177,000 verified signatures, it can trigger a referendum, though there are outstanding court challenges from Indigenous groups about the validity of the petition, as they claim it ignores treaty rights.
The complainant, whose identity is protected by StopHateAB’s protocols, said Alberta Prosperity Project CEO Mitch Sylvestre made a number of inflammatory comments about immigrants during the town hall at the Didsbury Memorial Complex, located 233 kilometers south of Edmonton and about 80 kilometers north of downtown Calgary.
The complainant flagged comments Sylvestre made about white Albertans being replaced by immigrants. The complaint also suggested Sylvestre said Christianity will soon be a crime in Canada, and that white Albertans shouldn’t have to apologize for themselves.
StopHateAB president Sunpreet Singh Johal said the organization has not opened a formal investigation into the Didsbury town hall, but will keep an eye on the Alberta Prosperity Project.
“We are closely monitoring any further reports related to Alberta Prosperity Project town halls that may come in, and we have taken the necessary steps to bring this information to the attention of our partners,” he said.
Postmedia staff have watched video footage of the Jan. 7 meeting and both Sylvestre and lawyer Jeffrey Rath touched on the topics of race, immigration and what it would all mean in an independent Alberta.
In the meeting, about 28 minutes into his speech, Sylvestre claimed former prime minister Justin Trudeau made the following statement: “The very concept of a nation founded by European settlers is offensive to me. Old stock white Canadians are an unpleasant relic and, quite frankly, replaceable. And we will replace them.”
A number of Internet watchdog sites have identified this as a meme with a fake quote. There is no verifiable, documented proof Trudeau said this.
‘This used to be what Alberta was’
But Sylvestre followed up the claim by saying APP shouldn’t apologize for being a white movement.
“Old stock white Canadians, and that’s us, and we don’t have to apologize for this room being filled with white people,” said Sylvestre. “This used to be what Alberta was. We’re not apologizing for being ourselves.”
Sylvestre went on to say Albertans welcome immigrants, and that they too are getting a raw deal out of Confederation. But he followed that up by saying “the replacement theory is real” — and that means the federal government’s immigration policy is designed to replace white Canadians with those of other races.
“They’re going to replace the people of Alberta,” said Sylvestre.
He also claimed it will soon be a hate crime in Canada to possess a Bible or Quran.
Later in the meeting, Sylvestre said an independent Alberta will be one with a very different makeup.
“Don’t forget that there’s a whole bunch of people here that are going to leave,” he said, to loud applause from the audience.
“If we have control over immigration, we can control who comes here.”
Sylvestre said in the two to three years following statehood, their vision of an independent Alberta is a place where citizenship rights are granted “only to people who are born here.”
Freedom of religion, freedom from religion
Rath said an independent Alberta will offer a better deal for the Indigenous population, and that First Nations would receive triple the amount of support they currently receive from the federal government. He said the federal government have kept Indigenous people in “abject poverty for decades” and described Prime Minister Mark Carney as an “existential threat” who is “destroying our relationship with the United States.”
He said an independent Alberta will have leverage over pipelines, as it basically cuts off British Columbia from the rest of the country, at least in a direct east-west fashion. And he added Alberta could use its border as leverage. If B.C. doesn’t play ball, he said, trucks could face two-week waits to clear the border and make their way to Saskatchewan and points east.
As for religious freedom in an independent Alberta, Rath said “we don’t want anyone else imposing their religion on us.” And he said the new country would grant freedom of religion, but also freedom from religion.
However, at the Alberta Prosperity Project event in Red Deer Wednesday night, the town hall kicked off with the King James version of Our Father.
It comes as Johal confirmed results of StopHateAB investigations into a September 2025 Alberta Next panel in Medicine Hat and separatist movements in Peace County would soon be released. Online reports could be made public in the next two weeks.
“Our anti-hate provincial outreach project also has done hate-related community assessments in Medicine Hat,” Johal said. “Also, in our community assessment in Peace Country, specific residents shared that they were experiencing increased levels of hate, Indigenous in particular, due to Alberta’s separatist movement.”
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